 "e-bus, Electric bus")
Good morning, BS readers!
Private buses account for 90 per cent of the 2 million buses on Indian roads. Their electrification is crucial if we want to reduce transport emissions.
But the high cost of electric buses is a deterrent. Since 2014, only 4,855 e-buses, 1.1 per cent of the 430,669 sold in the country, have been deployed. This is well below the average global e-bus penetration of 4.5 per cent. China leads the e-bus market, with an 80 per cent share of global sales in 2022.
Story of the week
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved a Rs 57,613 crore initiative to increase the use of electric buses in 169 cities.
This money will be spent to get 10,000 new electric buses. The scheme will augment city bus operations, under which priority will be given to cities having no organised bus service.
The PM-eBus Sewa will act as a catalyst for promotion of electric vehicles across urban centres to drive the penetration of electric mobility, Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV) said on Thursday.
Earlier this month, we reported that the government’s plan to replace diesel buses at public transporters with electric buses had hit a road block. CESL, the state-run company that handles the acquisition of electric vehicles for central and state government departments, was considering cancelling its dry lease tender for 4,675 e-buses after a disappointing response from manufacturers.
In other news…
The rupee hit an all-time closing low and the yield on the benchmark 10-year Indian government bond rose to a four-month high on Thursday amid a surge in the dollar index and US Treasury yields.
Isro on Friday said Chandrayaan-3's Lander Module had undergone a deboosting (slowing down) taking it closer to the Moon. The Lander Module, consisting of the lander (Vikram) and the rover (Pragyan), will undergo the second deboosting on August 20, to be lowered to an orbit that takes it much closer to the Moon's surface. The soft landing on the Lunar south pole is scheduled for August 23.
Two million postcards and eight million letters pass through India’s post offices daily, email and the internet notwithstanding. Snail mail is not picking up speed, though. The postal department’s numbers are declining even as the government works on a new legislation.
The GST Council’s fitment committee is expected to provide an explanation of the “ground clearance” criterion and its implementation for utility vehicles for the purpose of taxation. Ground clearance of above 170 mm is one of the three key parameters for categorising a UV and attracting a 22 per cent compensation cess.
India experienced a new peak in power demand, reaching a record 233 Gw on Wednesday due to rising temperatures as the monsoon retreats across the country. As the formidable El Nino weather phenomenon reaches India, power demand is projected to remain high until October.
Tech that: Word from the world of technology and start-ups
Infosys signed a $1.6 billion deal with Liberty Global for five years to scale up the London-based telecom firm’s digital entertainment and connectivity platforms.
Byju’s handed the pink slip to 100 employees in a fresh round of layoffs. However, according to a media report, the edtech company sacked 400 people.
Watch it: From The Morning Show
TMS had its 500th episode on Thursday and it lived up to the milestone. It told you why auditors are quitting, whether a bad loan recovery process pushed Nitin Desai to suicide, and whether defence-related stocks have more firepower.
Most importantly, it showed you glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes at Team TMS. Do not miss it!
What is Suveen obsessing over?
The horrors women have to endure in courts are not new.
In 2020, say reports, a high court judge ruled that it was unbecoming of a woman to fall asleep after being raped. In 2018, another high court judge called a 24-year-old woman who had defied her parents to marry a Muslim “weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways”.
Nor are these horrors confined to India.
The Stanford Law University’s website has a writeup that speaks of a 2016 instance in which a Canadian judge asked a sexual assault survivor why she couldn’t “just keep her knees together”.
Put yourself in the shoes of the victim and see how you feel.
In much-needed relief, things are moving in India.
In March 2021, the Supreme Court said judges must desist from commenting on the dress, behaviour, past conduct, or morals of a survivor of gender violence and strongly disapproved of courts suggesting marriage between an accused and a victim as a compromise in rape and molestation cases.
The provocation was a high court order asking an accused to get ‘rakhi’ tied on his wrist from the survivor as the condition for bail.
Wednesday saw the release of the draft of a 30-page booklet, prepared by a sub-committee of the Supreme Court. It contains a glossary of gender-unjust terms and suggests alternatives. It identifies common stereotypes about women, many of which were used by courts in the past, and demonstrates why they are inaccurate and how they distort the application of the law.
A woman is not a “chaste woman”, “a woman of easy virtue”, “harlot”, “seductress’, “slut” or “whore”, but simply a “woman”, says the handbook released by the Chief Justice of India, D Y Chandrachud.
This is Suveen signing off. Please send tips, comments, news, or views about anything from electric buses to handbooks for judges to suveen.sinha@bsmail.in.
(Suveen Sinha is Chief Content Editor at Business Standard)
